er acquainted with the
character and circumstances of the justice by whom he had been confined,
and likewise to understand the meaning of his own detention. To be
informed in this last particular, he renewed his dialogue with the
turnkey, who told him through the grate, that Ferret no sooner perceived
him in the jail without his offensive arms, which he had left below, than
he desired to be carried before the justice, where he had given
information against the knight, as a violator of the public peace, who
strolled about the country with unlawful arms, rendering the highways
unsafe, encroaching upon the freedom of elections, putting his majesty's
liege subjects in fear of their lives, and, in all probability,
harbouring more dangerous designs under an affected cloak of lunacy.
Ferret, upon this information, had been released, and entertained as an
evidence for the King; and Crabshaw was put into the stocks, as an idle
stroller.

Sir Launcelot, being satisfied in these particulars, addressed himself to
his fellow-prisoners, and begged they would communicate what they knew
respecting the worthy magistrate, who had been so premature in the
execution of his office. This request was no sooner signified, than a
crew of naked wretches crowded around him, and, like a congregation of
rooks, opened their throats all at once, in accusation of Justice Gobble.
The knight was moved at this scene, which he could not help comparing, in
his own mind, to what would appear upon a much more awful occasion, when
the cries of the widow and the orphan, the injured and oppressed, would
be uttered at the tribunal of an unerring Judge, against the villanous
and insolent authors of their calamity.

When he had, with some difficulty, quieted their clamours, and confined
his interrogation to one person of a tolerably decent appearance, he
learned, that Justice Gobble, whose father was a tailor, had for some
time served as a journeyman hosier in London, where he had picked up some
law terms, by conversing with hackney writers and attorneys' clerks of
the lowest order; that, upon the death of his master, he had insinuated
himself into the good graces of the widow, who took him for her husband,
so that he became a person of some consideration, and saved money apace;
that his pride, increasing with his substance, was reinforced by the
vanity of his wife, who persuaded him to retire from business, that they
might live genteelly in the country; that h